Gary Burton – Alone at Last Atlantic 1598 (1972)
Excellent solo outing from one of the biggest innovators of the vibraphone. Burton’s greatest contribution was proving that a jazz musician could take the ostensibly fixed-tone free bar instrument and produce bent notes (by pressing one mallet into a bar to change its natural frequency while impacting it with another mallet). Alone at Last is something of a template for other great virtuoso solo albums like Bobby McFerrin‘s The Voice and Sonny Sharrock‘s Guitar.